


because the majority

by NamelesslyNightlock



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Cynicism, Dark Tony Stark, Dubious Morality, Established Relationship, I think... tbh even that is grey in this fic, Introspection, Loki and Tony do love each other, M/M, Manipulative Loki (Marvel), Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Reflecting on Civil War, Team Iron Man, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Tony goes from trying to be a hero to just... not trying, Tony-centric, but in a good way, questions about villains and heroes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-01
Updated: 2018-01-01
Packaged: 2019-02-26 06:43:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13230156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NamelesslyNightlock/pseuds/NamelesslyNightlock
Summary: “If there’s one single thing that the world agrees upon... it’s that Captain America is a hero.”“Anthony,” Loki said quietly, his voice soft yet brutally uncompromising. “You are a very smart man, one with more intelligence than any others of your race could hope to match or even comprehend. But if you could understand only one thing in this moment, just the one thing, I need it to be this:the world is wrong.”





	because the majority

**Author's Note:**

> Wow okay so seems I really needed to get the fluff of the last one out of my system because this is the total opposite of fluff like woah

 

Wrong does not cease to be wrong because the majority share in it.  
―  **Leo Tolstoy** ,  _ **A Confession**_

 

The media had labelled it as a Civil War, as a battle between two factions of the world’s most cohesive team. The government saw it as an irritation, yet, an opportunity - something to capitalise on, to _exploit_. The people saw it as a tragedy. But no one saw it coming.

Well, almost.

Tony Stark certainly hadn’t been _surprised_. From the moment he’d been given the title of Avenger - _no, consultant \- _he’d been holding his breath, waiting for that moment when the shoe would drop and they’d all realise that he wasn’t a person anyone could work with. That he wasn’t _good._

Rhodey and Pepper and Happy were in his court. They all knew him, knew what went through his mind, knew exactly how he felt about his new teammates. They knew it was important to him, they thought he’d muddle it through. They thought it was a problem he could _fix_ , but in truth the issue wasn’t entirely on his end.

The Avengers, SHIELD, the _government_ – they’d all known all along that he didn’t play well with others, and he knew that they believed they all knew what they were doing regardless.

Honestly, he was a genius. He wasn’t _stupid_.

He’d seen the contingency plans on all the secret servers.

He knew what they all expected him to turn into, one day.

 _Villain_.

What makes a villain? Tony couldn’t help but wonder at the question, and while he considered at first some stereotypical notions of evil, he knew the picture was far more complicated. Probably something more along the lines of a person thinking they are right even when they aren’t, even when the whole world is telling them that what they are doing is wrong.

Whatever it was - stereotypical, complicated, mixed up in a moral dilemma - either way, Tony knew he wasn’t it, but he could see why some might be confused. Just a step to the side and maybe he _could_ be, but surely it was his morals that kept him afloat? Surely he could hold himself up if he _wanted_ to. But if his team thought he was already there - _he wasn’t_ \- then there was little he could do to dissuade them. Did it really matter, then? What he did?

Really, sleeping with the same god of mischief that had attempted to destroy New York - _it wasn’t his objective -_ just seemed like the next logical step.

And maybe the team had yet to find out about that. Just as they had yet to find out about the device he had been working on to neutralise the effects of Wanda’s ability, since he couldn’t face the thought of her messing around in his mind once again. Just as they had yet to find out about how he was integrating FRIDAY into an upgraded Iron Legion - _it may not seem like it but he was more than just goddamn capable of learning from past mistakes -_ a brand new and old and improved and dialled back scheme to protect the earth when the Avengers no longer could.

No, the team didn't know, they were still in the dark about how he’d essentially traded in Ultron for an upgrade.

And considering all that, it’s funny, in a way, that it was one of the things he thought they’d actually _approve_ of that had them turning on him.

After all, he was trying to do the responsible thing. The right thing. And the fact that it was Rogers who was branded the criminal at the end of it all was simply icing on the cake, because while the law might say one thing—

Well. The minds of the people might be fickle, but if there’s one thing they’ll always root for, it’s their heroes, regardless of what the law said. The fact that those stupid Cap videos were still being shown in goddamn _schools_ was proof of that. So Rogers still had the populace eating out of the palm of his hand. And at the end of it all, when Steve had run with his friend and his righteousness, Tony was left with a broken self in spirit, a broken friend in body, and a broken team in both.

At least he still had Loki.

The god came to him after everything, looking himself like he had been through horrors since his escape from the Asgardian prison and Tony knew that his deception of Thor hit him hard, still did, after years of contemplation. And while Tony and Loki had never been much good at making each other feel _better_ they were experts at keeping each other _sane_ , and really, for them, it amounted to something very similar.

Perhaps _sane_ , in its relative terms, was as good as it would get for them.

No, Loki didn’t offer comfort. But he offered logic, and that was superior in leagues to the empty platitudes and the half hopeful plans that Tony knew he’d get from the only three other people he believed he could properly trust. Because—

_ Stark men are made of iron. _

But despite how hard he’s tried to make the mantra _truth_ he’s still _human_ , painfully so, and Loki knows it.

“You told me once that what other people think holds no bonds on you,” Loki said, his voice twisting the words like snakes as they worked even now to catch Tony in a trap, despite the way his fingers pressed hard and soothing into the side of Tony’s throat. “Did you lie to me, Anthony?”

Tony snorted. They both knew the answer, insofar as the context when Tony had said it. And Tony wished he could argue that he truly didn’t care what words were spoken, but they both knew that _would_ be a lie. They both knew that lying, at least to each other, was something that neither would ever condone.

Closing his eyes, Tony breathed deeply before turning his gaze back up to Loki’s.

“They’re calling it a war,” he started, but Loki interrupted him with a short, derisive laugh.

“You know that wars are not so simple as to be black and white,” the god taunted, and Tony found it in himself to glare.

“I wasn’t _wrong_ ,” he snapped.

Loki grinned, his teeth glinting. “Good. If you were wrong then you were a fool, and I do not tolerate fools.”

Growling, Tony pulled away from Loki’s grasp enough to look properly stern. “Whether you thought me a fool or not wouldn’t change what I did. I may love you, Loki, but that’s not going to stand.”

“Good,” Loki repeated, his voice even harsher before. “Why should you take that from me? Why should I be able to dictate what you do?”

Another trap, but this time one that Tony was all too happy to fall into. “You don’t,” he snarled. “You _don’t_ get to tell me what to do, that’s the point. I did it because I knew I was right, regardless of your approval.”

Loki’s smile was both predatory and pleased, and he moved closer to Tony again, his touch this time far softer. “Good. Do not let anyone tell you what to do.”

Tony all but snarled, and moved into Loki’s space and claimed his lips in a complicated mess of possessiveness and gratefulness and anger. He hated how Loki could make Tony feel like he was winning, and then turn everything on its head before causing it all to crash down into something that was painfully exactly what Tony needed. He hated it, because it made him feel like he _needed_ Loki, and that was something he couldn’t allow. Because Tony had admitted he loved him, but he couldn’t admit to being unable to lose him. That would annihilate any hope of remaining on the side of the angels that Tony still held, and he knew _that_ would destroy everything he was– or at least, everything of himself that he had left.

_I am Iron Man. The suit and I are one._

It was Loki who pulled back first, though only far enough that their lips were no longer connected, his fingers tangled in Tony’s hair holding them close enough that the god’s green eyes blurred as Tony tried to focus his gaze.

“If you will not allow _my_ words to dictate your actions,” Loki asked in barely more than a whisper, “then why do you allow it of theirs?”

Tony lost some of his steam, deflating a little as his previous stubborn resolve caught on the open truth in Loki’s words. There was a moment of nothing but their breathing and Tony’s scrambling thoughts, but when the moment passed, Tony found his own words slipping out unbidden, leaving him vulnerable and exposed.

“If there’s one single thing that the world agrees upon... it’s that Captain America is a hero.”

A frown marred Loki’s face as he leaned forward, and Tony couldn’t help but stare at the lines that crossed his pale skin.

“Anthony,” he said quietly, his voice soft yet brutally uncompromising. “You are a very smart man, one with more intelligence than any others of your race could hope to match or even comprehend. But if you could understand only one thing in this moment, just the _one_ thing, I need it to be this: _the world is wrong._ ”

Tony paused, because that was a concept he could agree with. The world had been wrong about a lot of things in the past, except– wasn’t that undermining his whole side, the whole reason for the fight in the first place?

_117 countries wanna sign this. 117– and you’re like, “ Nah, it’s cool.”_

Rhodey had said that. Rhodey, who was honest and respectable and _good,_ and who had been Tony’s moral compass since before either of them had even properly learned what morality was.

Except… Rhodey _was_ good, but he wasn’t _Tony_ , and Tony was clever. He knew better than to think that he _knew better_ than the rest of the world - _that is dangerously arrogant -_ but he also knew that just because the majority believed something didn’t make it right. There were so many examples peppered all throughout history, and change always _started_ with a minority.

Perhaps there was more to the picture.

Tony held true to his course not because of the majority, but because _he_ believed it was the right thing to do. The majority helped his case but it wasn’t the _reason_. He knew the Avengers needed to be put in check, because as heroes, they weren’t working.

If you take the moral high ground, you simply have further to fall. And the Avengers, well– they hadn’t fallen, but they had certainly managed to meander down slowly enough that hardly anyone had noticed until it was too late, and that– _that_ was dangerous.

Tony shifted forward, resting his forehead upon Loki’s steady shoulder as his mind whirred, connecting dots that he’d glanced at before but had always been too afraid, or perhaps too _arrogant_ to piece together.

Truth is... Captain America may be a hero, but he was also an ideal. The man behind the mask was a living, breathing being, so much more and yet so much less than the symbol he portrayed. Tony thought back to his younger years, to the comics and the action figures and the photographs and the _worship_ instilled by an absent father. Heroes were for the hopeful. Heroes were for the naïve.

Heroes were for children, yet the world as a whole believed they walked among them like the divine before the meek.

Thinking of Loki and his tales of Vikings awed by advanced science, Tony smiled.

 _There is no such thing as heroes_ , and as loath as he was to prove the world right, Tony knew he could also prove them wrong.

Because after much thought and time and attention to detail, Tony had long since come to the conclusion that perhaps a villain was simply a person who believed that what they were doing was right and did it anyway, even when everyone else was telling them that they were wrong.

And perhaps that wasn’t exactly a bad thing.

_ I could do this all day.  _

Perhaps they were all villains, in the end, or perhaps none of them were. It was down to their own choice, and their own perception of themselves.

_I am Iron Man, and Iron Man doesn’t have to be a hero._

And when Tony was able to openly stand beside Loki while they worked to make the world a better place, fighting against Thanos with methods that had the approval of far less than half the population, he realised that he could no longer make sense of what was right and what was _best_.

He realised that perhaps this, _this_ was _exactly_ how  villains were made, and somehow– he found that he no longer cared.


End file.
